So, we have, after two years of pain and futile thrashing about, at last got an agreed solution to Brexit - agreed by the Cabinet, that is (for today, anyway). Next week it is to be ceremonially presented to the EU. Which will almost certainly reject it because it does not comply with their principles.

Either that or he did a lot and got overruled by her at the final furlong marker (or are we entering the final straight?).

More realistically "the end of the beginning": the easy bit was the government sorting out what it wanted. Now the hard bit begins...

Not surprised he resigned

Me neither, but I would have expected BoJo the Clown to be the first to flounce off in a tsunami of egotistical publicity. I can only assume that his careful calculations have determined that his desperate desire to be PM would be more likely to be satisfied if he stays put for now.

The irony is that Davis has probably made a smart career move today. He finds a new role for himself. He is no longer a bumbling incompetent gradually being cut off from negotiations. He is the lightning rod for Brexiter discord on the backbenches, where they can live out their permanent fantasies about how they would have done things so much better without ever having to actually explain how they might do so.

But with Davis it is demonstrably false. He was in charge and he messed it up, from start to finish. After all those complaints about the EU, he did not understand even very basic things about it. After all that arrogance and swagger, there was no intellectual force to back it up. He failed completely.

He was in charge and he messed it up, from start to finish. After all those complaints about the EU, he did not understand even very basic things about it. After all that arrogance and swagger, there was no intellectual force to back it up. He failed completely.

Here's an article that will make those who voted Leave cry with laughter. Such scare-mongering! Written by Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health and Medical Director at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy at City University, London. And what do they know? Well...

Published 11.7.18

Brexit threatens food supplies and Ministers know it.

The optimistic scenario is that, faced with recognition of the scale of the problems, the British government will seek to save face by leaving the EU, on paper, but continuing to behave as if it was an EU member for what it might call an “implementation period” but which will be, in effect, an indefinite state of limbo, as its economy slowly declines and its influence weakens. Eventually, there will be sufficient groundswell of opinion to rejoin the EU. The pessimistic one is that, perhaps by accident, the United Kingdom does crash out. In that case, as our analysis, and seemingly, the government’s own, shows, we can expect a severe humanitarian crisis, with widespread food shortages being one of the first manifestations.